Heart attacks, singing chipmunks and refined Englishmen

I hope you all had a good President's Day weekend. Thanks for your kind words after my last post, but I felt bad. I didn't mean for it to sound pitty-pottish, and I'm sorry if it did. I just feel like I've rounded a corner and wanted to share my new perspective.

We've had a fun weekend. Saturday found us cheering on my beautiful niece Abby at her soccer game, then we went bowling. Greg barely squeeked out a win, and that was after heckling me for being in the lead the entire game. That's never happened before; I am the world's worst bowler. Maybe it's because I was competing against children??? Then that night I was up until 2 am doing this to the kids' doors:

It was so much fun to see their reactions. I wrote inside jokes and nicknames on them, and had the kids write love notes to each other on the blank ones the next day. Valentine's Day was pretty low-key, since it was a Sunday. The kids ate way too much chocolate and complained about being bored after church, so it was a pretty typical day here. :)

Today found us having a picnic and playing at the park with our fun neighbors the May's. After that I took Trent, Elise and Seth to see the Chipmunk's 'sqeakquel'. It was my turn to take the kids to the movies, and I was dreading having to spend 90 minutes watching it. But I was happily surprised. I actually liked it a lot more than the first one. I'm not a huge fan of Jason Lee, and he wasn't in this one very much; so that was an improvement.

Have any of you been watching Masterpiece Classic on PBS? Some of you know that I am a Jane Austen nerd. I love all of her work, and have reread each book at least twice. The BBC has done a new version of "Emma", and I think it's the best one I've seen. I could go on and on about movie versions of the books, which ones are good, which ones got certain characters right, etc. but then you'd all know what a true geek I really am. You can watch 'Emma' online until March 9th; so plug in the headphones, snuggle up with a blanket and enjoy!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/emma/index.html

Life is good, even when it sucks

I know that's an oxymoron, but I've had an epiphany the last few days. I've been MIA the last month, and it's because I couldn't see that life was still good. I've been isolating myself, which is soooo not what I need to do when I'm down. I was only seeing the negative in my life; and I know that was making Satan happy. Even when I knew that in my heart, I couldn't pull myself up.
Then last week I read Rachel's post 'truth'
http://rachelandcompany.blogspot.com/2010/01/truth.html. As always, she is filled with insight and wisdom, and I knew God was speaking to my heart through her eloquent words. After I stopped crying, things started to become clear again.

My life is not perfect. It's not meant to be. It's never going to be. Kids are going to yell, the house is going to be a mess, money is going to be an issue. I need to learn to deal with these things and not let my entire perspective be skewed by the bad things. I have so many good things in my life. I have a husband that loves me, children whom I love so much it hurts. Extended family that cares about me, as well as friends that do too, even if it does seem like I've disappeared. I live in a beautiful home, we have food, clothes, and more toys than could ever be played with. I live in the greatest country on earth, my children are receiving an eduction, we have medicine when we're sick. But most importantly, I know that God loves me.

So even when it sucks, life is still good.